The Pilot's Mask
2017

The camera doesn’t leave the hospital in this film about the long road to recovery for children with serious illnesses. With wisdom beyond their years, the young patients often suffer more from the intensive treatment than they do from the disease itself. Parents distract their children as they disappear into the "tunnel" for yet another scan or get a tube inserted through their nose. The medical staff never loses patience, but the next patient is always waiting. Filmmaker Simonka de Jong has chosen the children's perspective, sometimes by letting them do the filming themselves. Parents and nurses are generally hands and voices in the background. The camerawork is dominated by close-ups, reinforcing our empathy with the children in their loneliness. The emotion remains beneath the surface in this observational documentary, but that's precisely what makes it so moving.